Over the past four years, in six unprecedented meetings held in Hanoi and a seventh meeting in Italy, Robert McNamara, his colleagues in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, and America's top Vietnam and military scholars finally met with their Vietnamese counterparts. In frank, revealing and sometimes astonishing dialogues, the two groups walked step-by-step through the war, analyzing each decision and action from both sides.

As they began to trust each other, these former enemies reconstructed the history of the war, filling in blanks, rewriting conventional wisdom, and often adding chapters previously unwritten. Why and how did America and North Vietnam end up on a collision course? Why did so many diplomatic efforts to end the war fail so miserably? Where did we miss opportunities to avoid the conflict altogether? For the first time ever, answers could be given to these and other questions.